So I mentioned in a previous post that the work of Florence Scovell Shinn was referenced in a quasi-random textfile I happend upon. I ended up picking up an audiobook of her collected works from Libro.FM (yes, that’s an affiliate link).
It’s kind of thrown me for a loop. Disrupted me. I was under the belief that so-called “prosperity gospel,” which pretty much seems to preach a link from Christianity to wealth and prosperity, came into being maybe in the 1970s or 1980s. I thought of it as a relatively recent deviation from the traditional spiritual and moral course.
But at its core, this is what Florence Scovell Shinn put into the world — way back in 1925 — with her debut work, The Game of Life and How to Play It. In truth, so far the only thing distinguishing this work from modern prosperity gospel is the lack of a direct link for her to profit. I guess the book medium doesn’t lend itself quite so well to the transactional nature of today’s media. Or it was the soft sell to get them to come to her in person. She speaks a lot in her work of people that come to her for “treatment.”
I swear, if she’s not the grandmother of both prosperity gospel and even NLP, I don’t know who is. One of her other titles is “Your Word is Your Wand.” She references frequently how your choice of words, your phrasing, can describe your intention and have positive or negative effects on your life, even above your actual intention. One example she provides is how someone who wished they could see better expressed it using a poor choice of words, frequently saying “I wish I could get rid of these glasses,” and then wondered why their glasses kept breaking, etc. She emphasized the importance of choosing your words carefully to reflect your true intent. Instead of just wishing your glasses were gone, choose words that represent the perfect vision you desire.
On the prosperity side of things, one of the catchphrases/prayer-like mantras is “Infinite spirit, open the way for my perfect abundance. I am an irresistible magnet for everything that is mine by divine right,” which sounds kind of ego-centered, but I think that’s kind of the point of what she was putting out there.
Maybe her works influenced Ayn Rand.